Aljamain Sterling wasn’t surprised by anything he saw at UFC 316 between Merab Dvalishvili and Sean O’Malley.
Similar to Dvalishvili’s first clash with O’Malley this past September, Sterling played a key role in helping the UFC’s reigning bantamweight champion prepare for his latest title defense. The roles were reversed in the rematch, however, with Dvalishvili entering with the belt and O’Malley entering as the challenger, yet Dvalishvili was once again too much, submitting O’Malley with a vicious third-round north-south choke.
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Appearing in-studio Wednesday on “The Ariel Helwani Show,” Sterling said he thought O’Malley actually looked better in the first fight despite O’Malley having nine months to prepare for the rematch.
“Respectfully, I didn’t see anything that was significantly different,” Sterling said. “The only thing I can honestly look at was maybe he was more bouncy on his feet in Round 1, hopping around, side-to-side. Maybe that’s the whole thing he was talking about with his hip [being injured in the fight Dvalishvili fight]. But honestly, it didn’t make a difference.
“I told Merab, ‘Dude, I think I have pretty decent cardio, and if I’m bouncing around and faking like this and I’m missing, and not able to slow you down with any type of damage, you see what is happening to me [getting tired] — it’s going to happen to him.’ I’m telling you from experience. It’s not possible to fake that many times, hard fakes, react, control the breathing, all at the same time, and react to your opponent’s movements and their feints, and be able to keep up that pace the whole time.
“I don’t want to be unfair to him,” Sterling continued, “but I don’t think that version of [O’Malley] looked better than the first one. … He stopped takedowns in the first fight too. But at the end of the day, you stop the takedown, then what? [Dvalishvili] is going to keep shooting again and again. You stop one takedown, you want a biscuit? Can you stop the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth? Then, after that, have you done anything offensive to actually win the rounds. When you break it down like that, he’s an enigma to try and figure out, Merab.”
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Sterling’s own UFC bantamweight title reign infamously came to an end thanks to an O’Malley knockout in 2023. “The Funkmaster” has since moved up to the featherweight division and remained a fixture in Dvalishvili’s camps, just as the current champion has done for Sterling.
Regarding the O’Malley saga, Sterling hoped to get an immediate title rematch of his own after dropping his belt to O’Malley, but UFC went in the direction of a different rematch instead, as O’Malley’s first title defense came against Marlon Vera. O’Malley won that fight with a lopsided decision in March 2024.
Sterling has accepted the reality of the situation, though he’s admittedly still somewhat bitter about how things panned out,
“I would be lying if I said I didn’t [care that O’Malley got an immediate rematch and I didn’t],” Sterling said. “It is what it is. It definitely is one of those things, but I’m not the cup of tea they want to put right back into it. Obviously my style is my style, so I get it in a business standpoint. But at the end of the day, it’s like, you can’t be envious of what other people get. What he eats doesn’t make me s***. Happy for him. He got it, I didn’t. I had to work my ass off, and that’s the one thing that no one can ever say about my career — I’ve never been handed anything. I’ve taken the long road just like Merab had to take the long road, and we both cashed out and made the best of it, and I think that’s the beauty of our story.”
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Sterling has fought twice at featherweight since his arrival to the division in April 2024. He defeated perennial contender Calvin Kattar by unanimous decision at UFC 300, then suffered a hard-fought decision loss to Movsar Evloev at UFC 310 this past December.
The title defeat and consistently tough weight cuts to 135 pounds ultimately led Sterling to leave his longtime weight class. Likewise, O’Malley has teased the possibility of fighting at featherweight in the past, most notably when he was hoping for a big champion vs. champion clash against former featherweight titleholder Ilia Topuria. With back-to-back clear-cut losses to Dvalishvili now on his résumé, O’Malley suddenly finds himself stuck in purgatory regarding his bantamweight title hopes.
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If O’Malley does eventually change divisions, Sterling would welcome him with open arms.
“It would be fun because the storyline, and now people would get to see what a motivated Sterling would look like, and what he would have done in the first fight had I been given time,” Sterling said. “And I even asked [the UFC] to push the fight back, like, ‘Can we push it back to September or October just to give me a little bit more time, so I can get the weight down and recover first to do a whole proper camp versus just jumping in when my legs are beat to s*** and I have to do all this rehab for all this other stuff?’
“The people don’t see that. They only see the performance, and if you say something about it, you’re the a**hole, you’re making excuses. Then when O’Malley fought Merab the first time, it’s, ‘Oh, my hip, the lights,’ and all this other weird s***. How come he’s not getting the same backlash I got? It’s very bizarre.”
Sterling and O’Malley had a much more heated — and outspoken — rivalry than O’Malley did with Dvalishvili. Regardless of their history, though, Sterling won’t be upset if he never gets redemption against his fellow former champ. As a friend and teammate of Sterling’s, Dvalishvili’s wins were enough.
John Wood, Ray Longo, and Aljamain Sterling (right) in the corner of Merab Dvalishvili at UFC 306. (Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC)
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
“I don’t really give a s*** about O’Malley,” Sterling stated. “I would hang out with the guy. I don’t have a vendetta, like, ‘I need to get this guy.’ I’m satisfied seeing Merab do to him what I should’ve done. That’s satisfying in itself.”
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While Sterling is currently gearing up for his big wedding day, he’s also thinking about his next featherweight fight, eyeing a possible return in August or September. In terms of potential opponents, there are two specifically he has locked in his crosshairs.
“In an ideal world, in terms of name value, [fights] that makes sense, that people are going to give a s*** about the fight — Brian Ortega,” Sterling said. “Former title challenger, a couple times. He’s a homie, man. He’s cool. I heard [he was moving to lightweight], but I think that was just rumors.
“I know he’s the same thing, he was in bad headspaces in certain fights. We’ve seen that with him where he’s had some really bad performances, then he’ll come back after taking some time off and Brian comes back and looks like a freaking world-beater. When he fought ‘Korean Zombie’ (Chan Sung Jung), and he came back and pieced him up, I’m like, ‘That was not the Brian that fought these other guys that we were just watching.’ So I know it’s not an easy fight.
“The next big name would be Arnold Allen. That’s a hard fight for me. Southpaw. Movsar had a hard time holding him down, and he’s just a dog, man. When he knows he’s losing, he just starts going for it and swinging.”
